The following is advice I received from Jeff Hughes of Rocket Clicks, a modern, inspiring company that specializes in managing people’s Google Adwords accounts. Jeff provided some fascinating advice which I immediately actioned and saw results fast.
On 15/03/2009, at 3:57 AM, Jeff Hughes wrote:
Hello Zoe,
It was a pleasure meeting and talking to you last week. I appreciate your patience with me getting you this Blueprint to improve your PPC account.
First, please let me commend you. So far, you have done a good job putting the account together. I am happy to know you are starting to see a positive ROI.
Second, the good news for you is that you can get even more out of your account. The steps below describe how.
Purpose of Email
- Outline an initial Success Blueprint (prioritized plan of action) on how to improve your account. As we discussed, I believe you have many opportunities to improve your online efforts. I only describe the most important ones below.
- Propose a solution for my firm, Rocket Clicks, to execute the Success Blueprint. This also includes the initial investment and ongoing fee structure.
- Inform you how the Rocket Clicks team is organized to maximize the value to your business.
- Provide a chronology on how we will:
- Give you peace of mind that caring experts are handling one of the most sensitive, critical aspects of your business (and livelihood).
- Help you release the “entrepreneurial guilt” many owners feel because they are not doing everything they “know needs to be done, but just can’t make the time to do.”
- Begin to free up your time so you can focus on other aspects of your business and start to grow those as well.
Success Blueprint – Prioritized Plan of ActionI am excited for you because there are several things we can and should implement quickly to generate immediate improvement to your online marketing. The following outlines the MOST glaring and immediate opportunities.
“Peel and Stick” your highest traffic, “money” keywords in to their own adgroups.
Why is this important?
There is a small percentage of your keywords that get most of the traffic. Typically, in the Search network, I see something like 5% of the keywords in an account receiving approximately 95% of the impressions, clicks, and conversions. Therefore, these keywords deserve (I think “demand”) their own specialized attention. It’s best practice to insert just ONE of these keywords (with one match type) into its own adgroup. This allows customized adcopy, customized bidding, and focused attention on the keywords that have the greatest potential and impact. (In many cases, these keywords deserve a unique landing page too.)
“Hyper-Relevancy” is the quintessential principle in the pay per click game. Google (and other engines) rewards advertisers whose keyword text matches the associated ads, and whose landing pages match both of the above. The impact of this is almost always a dramatic increase in click through rate, a dramatic reduction in cost per click, and a (less dramatic) increase in impressions made available.
You and I looked at several adgroups loosely arranged by theme. In those adgroups you had several keywords that deserved their own individual adgroups. By putting your MOST trafficked keywords into individual adgroups, you will be better able to optimize them and get more return on your investment. This will likely allows your best adsyou’re your money keywords to be shown more at less costs.
How is this done?
First, you need to limit this it only the most trafficked, money keywords. Do not get bogged down with too many keywords. You must discipline yourself to “major in the majors, not in the minors.
Second, the best way to start is to do a keyword report for all relevant keywords in the account and start the analysis there.
Separate all Google, Partner, and Content (Adsense) traffic into unique campaigns.
Why is this important?
The primary reason is that all three sources of traffic are different. Therefore, you need to treat them differently with specialized bidding strategies and ad copy. For search campaigns, Google provides the option to syndicate beyond the Google search page to other services such as AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, etc. (These are called “partner networks.”) Partner networks in most markets are usually comprised of different demographics and psychographics, and of people in a somewhat different mindset. This is due to the different opportunities, links, and graphics available in the partner environment. Therefore, it’s not unusual for people to respond to different types of ads in the partner network than they do in the Google network itself.
Partner networks also tend to be less competitively priced than the Google network itself. Taken together, in a market with reasonable volume, it’s almost always a good idea to separate traffic for partner networks out from the Google network. This allows for a more effective optimization of BOTH networks, generally resulting in more traffic for less money (or a lowered cost per conversion).
Also, Content traffic is usually dramatically different than traffic from the “Search” network, which is comprised of both Google and Partner traffic. Content traffic depends on your ad “diverting” the user’s attention, while users in the Search network are actively searching on keywords you are bidding.
The secondary reason is that since Google determines your cost per click, in large part, by your keywords’ and account’s performance within the Google network. Therefore, it is best practice to focus the intensity of your optimization efforts on the traffic stream that Google evaluates heaviest.
The vast majority of marketers do NOT implement this technique. Doing this ultimately results in a competitive advantage over those who don’t.
How is this done?
This is accomplished by modifying the campaign settings and disallowing or directing traffic. Then, to “force” the flow of Google network traffic away from Partner campaigns, the bids for Partner keywords need to be lower than the exact same keywords for Google. Keeping Content traffic “pure” is easy within the campaign settings.
Use negative keywords for both the Google and Partner campaigns.
Why is this important?
Google has expanded their reporting on search queries which are triggering impressions. (You can locate this info in the reporting tools and in your analytics program.) Identifying those terms which are not producing conversions is a critical method to eliminate waste from your ad spend. In fact, I have found that expanding the negative keyword list often renders the most dramatic impact on your account as compared to everything else I do!
Moreover, Google has more recently described in greater depth exactly how their negative match algorithm works, allowing greater precision in its use. It was previously common to mistakenly eliminate desirable impressions while trying to excise unprofitable keywords.
Most advertisers don’t realize that when deleting a poorly performing keyword from a search group (or “peeling and sticking” it to another ad group), one should also add that keyword as a negative to the same group, otherwise the same search term can still trigger impressions via the broad and phrase matches in that group.
You DEFINITELY have lots of room for improvement here. You need to give this step some serious effort. It might be one of your biggest keys to cutting out waste in your account.
How is this done?
The campaign settings allow you to add negative keywords on the campaign level. You may also add negative keywords on the adgroup level.
Separate the traffic between countries.
Why is this important?
The competition for keyword bids in different countries often varies dramatically. Furthermore, cultural differences often cause people in one country to respond to differing ad text than in another. It is therefore almost always a good idea to separate large nations from one another. (USA vs. Canada vs. Europe vs. Australia, etc.)
We discussed this in our call. You certainly need to keep all traffic for individual countries in separate campaigns. This will enable you to focus your message to individual countries and cultures.
How is this done?
Your campaign settings have an option for geotargeting to countries.
Optimize and build out the Content network.
Why is this important?
Additional traffic volume and profits MAY be waiting for you within the content network. It is a mistake to automatically rule out the Content network without first carefully testing it. In some markets, the Content network is the only way to get something to work. On the other extreme, in some markets the Content network is a money pit. The best practice is to carefully test this and see how your market responds.
I see the Content network as being one of the best sources of quality traffic for your market. I have seen other Network Marketers be very successful using the Content network.
How is this done?
I can’t fully describe all the strategies and tactics here. That would require a short book. The truth is that most advertisers really don’t understand how to work with the content network. Here is a partial list of some of our methods for doing this:
Exclude high impression but low click through sites. Excluding these from your campaign on an adgroup by adgroup basis will increase your click through rate, either allowing your bid to drop for the same amount of traffic, or, alternatively, allowing you to purchase more traffic for the same amount of money. Sometimes these sites can be fixed by moving to a more appropriate adgroup. Sites in this category which DO get high conversion rates may be exempted from this exclusion.
Exclude high click through but low conversion sites. Excluding these from your campaign eliminates waste on inappropriate visitors.
Site target the ultra high conversion sites. This will allow separate bidding to more thoroughly optimizing their click through rate.
Test your adcopy through A/B and multivariate testing.
Why is this important?
No matter how good of a copy writer you are, you never know exactly what the client wants until the client tells you. The best way to allow the client to tell you is to give options of different messages (ad copy) to choose from. Once you find a winning ad copy combination, you can work to optimize that over time. The more optimized your ad copy is, the more profitable you will be. We believe the best way to determine a winning ad is to optimize by profit per impression. Almost no advertiser does this, although it is precisely what Google does.
Where there is enough volume to warrant it, you should also enhance the speed of split testing results by implementing multivariate (Taguchi) tests. This is an advanced method which allows you to reliably test dozens, or even hundreds of ad variations with relatively few impressions.
How is this done?
You Google interface allows you to show multiple ads for one adgroup. You will need rotate the ads evenly and measure the best ad by profit per impression. (See below for more discussion on Profit per Impression.)
There are certainly many other “advanced” strategies that should be implemented as you seek to optimize and scale out your online efforts. Here are a few that come to mind, but only work on these AFTER you do the above:
Optimize by Profit per Impression. Here is a video which describes this concept: http://www.ppcx7.com/1001.htm
Test day parting for displaying ad and adjusting bids.
Expand your current campaigns through additional keywords and/or testing MSN and Yahoo (and possibly 3rd tier PPC engines like MIVA, Search, GoClick, and others).
Review your ad positioning for maximum profit per impression.
Develop unique landing pages for the most trafficked, money keywords. (Zoe, this is probably the FIRST thing you should do after you complete the list above, which are higher priority.)
Thank you again for the opportunity to serve you.
Kindly yours,
Jeff Hughes
President / Co-Founder
RocketClicks.com
Hi Jeff,
Thanks so much, I will begin to implement the changes you outlined. In fact I already have started. Thanks. Your advice is worth way more than the consult fee. I might apply again 
just to get the consultation.
best wishes,
Zoe
